This thesis is an analysis of the ways in which images of bodily disgust function in social conflicts. It considers the necessary embodiment of political struggle: that is, the ways in which inequalities are sustained and contested through the material forms taken by human bodies and the meanings attached to bodily states. In chapter one I map out the theoretical grounding for an inquiry into embodiment, by showing how the physical forms taken by bodies are produced by social practices. I argue that ‘the body’ should be seen as a biological product, a ‘body project’, regulated and transformed by its environment. This in turn leads me to a consideration of how such body-shapings sustain regimes of power through constructing for subjects physical forms which are designed to maintain existing systems of inequality. Through a reading of Michel Foucault’s work, I show how such bodies are also able to resist power by making use of the material and discursive structures which seek, but fail, to render them wholly submissive. In chapter two I look at the ways in which the body acts as a map of the psyche, producing a subject which understands itself in terms of its experience of its body parts. I also consider how the body acts as a social symbol, encoding anxieties about the society that it inhabits. By considering both psychoanalytic accounts, and the work of Mary Douglas, I interrogate how concepts of order, form, and integrity become central to embodied subjectivity. In chapter three I consider how, in the Naked Lunch Quartet, William Burroughs represents the body as under threat from repulsive external substances, and how his depiction of such substances in fact relies on a notion of body matter itself as repulsive. I will show how this results from his conceptualization of bodily materiality as antithetical to freedom, and I argue that by demonstrating the impossibility of escaping from acts of invasion and possession, Burroughs's texts in fact undermine the libertarian position that he adopts. In chapter four I develop this argument through a comparison with Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection. I suggest that his representation of abject bodies enables Burroughs to critique the invasive mechanisms of authority, but requires that he collude with the stigmatizing discourses of authority in order to adopt such a position. In particular I consider how this affects his representation of gender. In chapter five I show how David Cronenberg's Shivers may be read as a film that both sustains and critiques the notion of innate bodily disorder. I argue that this is derived from his reliance upon notions of a hierarchy of bodies derived from inequalities of race and class. In chapter six I develop this critique with a reading of Cronenberg's The Fly. I suggest that this film is much more explicit about the fact that bodily chaos is in fact a state experienced by the socially excluded. It offers a critique of the processes by which we are made to feel disgust at our bodies, suggesting that disgust inaugurates a logic of paranoid purification, which in fact impedes the possibilities of the acceptance of those bodies which fall outside certain social limits. Finally, in my conclusion, I look at how Cronenberg's Rabid might be seen as a compendium of the issues of embodied politics, and use this to suggest possible directions in which the work of this thesis might be extended.

The thesis investigates the sociological, cultural and ideological factors that affect the production and marketing of two major translations published in Fascist Italy and targeting both adult and young readers. The dissertation focuses upon a selected corpus of translations of the American novels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Little Women (1868), which were repeatedly translated between the 1920s and 1940s. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, which encompasses fields such as the history of publishing, the sociology of translation, children’s literature, studies on the role and functions of the Paratext and scholarship on Fascism and its cultural policy, this study aims to offer a detailed examination of the Italian publishing market during the Ventennio. It probes the contexts informing the publishing history of these translations, their readerships, and interrelations with the growing importance of cinema, as well as questions related to the various retranslations produced. Furthermore, given the central role of publishing in the shaping of political consent and the contradictory attitude of the regime towards translations, this thesis explores ideological influences affecting selected translations of these novels that centre on issues of particular resonance for the regime, namely, race and gender. The dissertation is divided in two parallel sections, each one divided into three chapters. The opening chapters in each part examine the publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Little Women respectively, with attention to the USA, the UK, and France and a primary focus upon Italy, above all Fascist Italy. The following chapters in each section investigate the role that the visual representations of these two books played in conveying racial and gender aspects and in contributing to the construction of their meaning by the readers. Finally, the closing chapters of each section are devoted to a translation analysis of selected passages in order to survey translational behaviours used to depict feminine and racial features, given that these were known to be especially problematic during the Ventennio. This survey aims to pinpoint norms informing translations targeting both young people and adults.

This thesis examines the European influences on the works of Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs, focusing on the themes, styles, techniques and preoccupations derived from Existentialism, Surrealism and Primitivism. Their texts, informed by their interest in the transatlantic intellectual currents of the time and non-American influences, represent a dissenting voice against the commonly and officially held values of the post-World War II United States and Western ideological power structures, and offer an insight into the development of a twentieth century American cultural identity. Examining Bowles and Burroughs in parallel gives a unique insight into their differences and striking similarities with regard to their experiences of expatriation and European sensibilities. Analysis of the historical context and material history of the publication, underlying influences, themes, techniques and preoccupations of their works reveals a deeper political engagement than has been previously shown. Bowles and Burroughs participated in a broad transatlantic dialogue of ideas, as reflected in the geopolitical and chronopolitical similarities of their works. The thesis focuses on their use of similar themes such as alienation, derived from Sartrean Existentialism, and their shared existential negativity toward life in the United States. It is argued that their style and method of indirect ideological expression, derived from Existentialism, enables a form of expression that can effectively and covertly interrogate American identity. Their use of experimental techniques drawn directly from the politically charged European based art movements of Dada and Surrealism, such as automatism, is shown to create a politically useful distance between the work and the author, while Surrealist preoccupations with shock, intoxication and violence evoke a closer relationship between the work and the reader. The notion of 'primitivism' and a persistent interest in 'primitive cultures' that intersects with representations of sexuality and a rejection of modernity in their works is examined as a reflection of their negative attitudes toward the modernism represented by the United States. Examining the parallels between their works and the development of film noir also reveals an engagement with a broad transatlantic exchange of ideas, styles and techniques across media. Their experimentation with the constructed nature of authorship, which developed through literary practice in their later works is shown to interrogate the concurrent poststructuralist theories of authorship. The historical contexts, influences of European intellectual cross-currents and range of connections between Bowles and Burroughs combine to make a compelling case that their works are politically charged, transatlantic in style and technique, and stridently significant in the history of English language literature and our understanding of contemporary American and European cultures.

Despite the vast amount of critical writing on the Language movement, little attention has been paid to the specific linguistic and cognitive processes involved both in the creation and comprehension of this innovative work. Motivated by the assumption that an experience with literature is an experience with language, this study investigates the poetry and poetics of three writers closely associated with Language writing and their works in the 1980s: Susan Howe and The Europe of Trusts and Articulations of Sound Forms in Time; Lyn Hejinian and My Life; and Rosmarie Waldrop and The Reproduction of Profiles. The approach taken in this dissertation is to investigate innovative writing with reference to linguistic and cognitive features through the perspective known as cognitive poetics which emphasizes the primacy of the reader in the experience of literary reading. The thesis offers insights into both the psychological and linguistic aspects of literary reading, shifting the focus from interpretation--whether that of the author or that of the critic--to the basis of these aspects in textuality. Textuality concerns both the material text as object, but also the connections the reader makes between stylistic features and felt experience. This dissertation thus addresses literary writing as discourse--as a social act of communication, incorporating other voices, viewpoints, times and cultures. It is suggested here that the complex interplay between word and grammar, world and ideology evident in these texts is connected to Language writing and contemporary verse culture more generally, and that cognitive poetics offers an explicit way to account for the effects of the syntactic experimentation and ideologies of this writing. Especially relevant to this study has been the tendency to site language in landscape to create what I call a poetics of languescape. The collection of poetry, Continental Drift, that completes this study emerges from these correspondences.

The present study proposes that there is an intrinsic relationship between the contemporary American short story cycle and the myth and ideology of the United States. I argue that the contemporary form of the story cycle has become the genre of choice for certain authors whose work explicitly challenges the dominant ideological discourses of Euroamerica and its underpinning mythologies. The five authors and the texts I discuss are Tim O’Brien and The Things They Carried, Julia Alvarez and How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Gerald Vizenor and Landfill Meditation, Sherman Alexie and Ten Little Indians, and Thomas King and Green Grass, Running Water. In the thesis I address the interrelationship between ideology and mythology and this is the foundation for my examination of the way that these five disparate writers each uses the story cycle in his or her own distinctive way to challenge a dominant ideology and the mythology that underpins it.

This thesis explores the use of literary fantasy in the construction of identity and ‘home’ in contemporary diasporic Chinese women’s literature. I argues that the use of fantasy acts as a way of undermining the power of patriarchal values and unsettling fixed notions of home. In each of these four texts by Chinese diasporic women author, the authors or their protagonists describe different explorations of the search for home: a space where they can articulate their voices and desires. The notion of home for these diasporic Chinese women is much more complex than a simple feeling of nostalgia in response to a state of displacement and unhomeliness. The idea of home relates to complicated struggles to gain a sense of belonging, as experienced by marginalized subjects constructing their diasporic identities — which can best be understood as unstable, shifting, and shaped by historical conditions and power relations. Fantasy is seen as a literary mode in the corpus of this study, as described in Rosemary Jackson’s Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion (1981). Literary fantasy offers a way to rework ancient myths, fairytales, ghost stories and legends; it also subverts conventional narrative representation, and challenges the restricting powers of patriarchy and other dominant ideologies. Through a critical reading of four texts written by diasporic Chinese women, namely, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976); Adeline Yen Mah’s Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (1997); Ying Chen’s Ingratitude (1995) and Larissa Lai’s When Fox is a Thousand (1995), this thesis aims to offer critical insights into how these works re-imagine a ‘home’ through literary fantasy which leads beyond the nationalist and Orientalist stereotypes; and how essentialist conceptions of diasporic culture are challenged by global geopolitics and cultural interactions.

Though David Foster Wallace is well known for declaring that “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being” (Conversations 26), what he actually meant by the term “human being” has been quite forgotten. It is a truism in Wallace studies that Wallace is a posthuman writer whose characters are devoid of any kind of inner interiority or soul. This is a misreading of Wallace’s work. My argument is that Wallace’s work and his characters—though they are much neglected in Wallace studies—are animated by the tension between materialism and essentialism, and this dualism is one of the major ways in which Wallace bridges postmodern fiction with something new. My project is itself part of this post-postmodern turn, a contribution to the emerging field of cognitive literary studies which has tried to move beyond postmodernism by bringing a renewed focus on the sciences of mind to literary criticism. As yet, this field has largely focused on fiction published before the twentieth century. I expand the purview of cognitive literary studies and give a rigorous and necessary account of Wallace’s humanism. In each chapter I discuss a particular concern that Wallace shares with his predecessors (authorship; selfhood; therapy; free will), and explore how Wallace’s dualism informs his departure from postmodernism. I begin by setting out the key scientific sources for Wallace, and the embodied model of mind that was foundational to his writing and his understanding, especially after Barthes’s “Death of the Author,” of the writing process. In chapter 2, I unravel the unexamined but hugely significant influence of René Descartes on Wallace’s ghost stories, showing that Wallace’s work is not as posthuman as it is supposed to be. In chapter 3, I discuss the dualist metaphors that Wallace consistently uses to describe an individual’s experience of sickness. Focusing on the interior lives of both therapist and patient in Wallace’s work, I show that Wallace’s therapy fictions are a critical response to postmodern anti-psychiatry. Finally, in chapter 4, I reconcile Wallace’s dualist account of material body and essential mind by setting his work against both the history of the philosophy of free will and postmodern paranoid fiction. If Wallace’s fiction is about what it is to be a human being, this thesis is about the human ‘I’ at the heart of Wallace’s work.

This thesis is an exploration of reading styles and stylistic patterning in relation to dystopian fiction. Situated within an empirical cognitive poetics, the study draws upon naturalistic reader-response data, with specific reference to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron’, as case studies of dystopian texts that produce a spectrum of readings. The notions of preferred and dispreferred responses are defined in cognitive linguistic and pragmatic terms, and non-normative readings of these dystopian texts are investigated. The thesis adopts a text-world theoretical description, and provides both naturalistic reader-community data as well as focused interviews and reading protocols. It was found that some readers insist on producing dispreferred readings even in the face of lack of textually-driven evidence. Such readers allow their own emotions, outlooks and dispositions to over-ride the textual patterning, in producing dispreferred and non-evidential readings. These readings are nevertheless genuinely held. This study raises questions for all text-driven models of literary reading and analysis.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade Gama, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Integridade de Materiais da Engenharia, 2014. / Submitted by Raquel Viana (raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2014-10-27T15:29:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_LuizCarlosCorreiadeJesus.pdf: 4417231 bytes, checksum: b867ed85ae8333825735a811f93f749c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Raquel Viana(raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2014-10-29T15:41:57Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_LuizCarlosCorreiadeJesus.pdf: 4417231 bytes, checksum: b867ed85ae8333825735a811f93f749c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-29T15:41:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_LuizCarlosCorreiadeJesus.pdf: 4417231 bytes, checksum: b867ed85ae8333825735a811f93f749c (MD5) / O EPS (poliestireno expandido) é um polímero resultante da polimerização do estireno em água e é imensamente utilizado para a confecção de embalagens. O produto final é composto por pérolas de até três milímetros de diâmetro que se destinam à expansão com vapor quente. Na natureza, este polímero pode levar vários anos para ser degradado. Pensou-se neste trabalho testar a viabilidade de reforçar o PS com fibras naturais a fim de aliar as propriedades das fibras com a versatilidade do polímero. Deste modo, o principal objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar as propriedades mecânicas, térmicas, reológicas e morfológica dos compósitos de poliestireno (PS) reciclado reforçado com fibra de celulose de bagaço de cana-de-açúcar com lignina residual. Além de avaliar o perfil da lignina com agente compatibilizante, verificando a interface entre fibra de celulose e a matriz do poliestireno. Para a obtenção das fibras celulósicas, a extração foi realizada pelo processo de polpação em meio fortemente alcalino (NaOH). Os compósitos foram obtidos por extrusão em extrusora mono-rosca e posteriormente em dupla-rosca, e depois injetados. Os materiais foram caracterizados por ensaios mecânicos, análises térmicas (TGA, HDT, DSC e DMA), análise reológica (reometria de placas paralelas e índice de fluidez), microscopia (MEV) e FTIR/ATR. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que a adição de fibra de celulose fez com que a resistência à flexão e tração e os módulos aumentassem e concomitantemente a dureza. Com relação às análises térmicas, estas técnicas permitiram a avaliação do limite de temperatura no qual este material pode ser processado, como também a influência do teor de fibras na matriz e a temperatura de deflexão térmica. As curvas de TGA mostraram que os compósitos tem uma estabilidade térmica intermediária entre fibra de celulose e matriz polimérica e o DSC para os compósitos mostraram eventos térmicos semelhantes em relação ao PS reciclado. O HDT mostrou que quando é adicionada fibra na matriz polimérica, a temperatura de deflexão também é aumentada. As curvas DMA mostraram aumento do módulo de armazenamento do polímero e dos compósitos e a Tg (temperatura de transição vítrea) em relação aos dados da literatura. A análise da microestrutura por MEV do PS e dos compósitos permitiram avaliar os mecanismos de falha dos compósitos, mostrando a razoável transferência de tensão entre fibra e matriz antes do rompimento do material. Os ensaios reológicos confirmaram a relação entre massa molar, viscosidade e índice de fluidez. O compósito que apresentou o menor IF e maior viscosidade foi o com 20% de fibra de celulose, portanto, este apresenta a maior massa molar viscosimétrica. Desta maneira, foi possível definir a melhor forma de processamento, desempenho mecânico, limites de temperatura de aplicação e processamento, estabilidade térmica, interface entre fibra e matriz, viscosidade, massa molar e índice de fluidez para os compósitos de PS reforçados com celulose de bagaço-de-cana. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / The EPS (expanded polystyrene) is a polymer resulting from the polymerization of styrene in water and is greatly used in package manufacturing. The final product consists on the three millimeters diameter spheres expansion with hot steam. In nature, this polymer can take several years to be degraded. Thus, the main objective of this work is to evaluate the mechanical, thermal, rheological and morphological properties of composites of polystyrene (PS) reinforced with recycled cellulose fiber bagasse sugarcane residual lignin. In addition to evaluating the profile of lignin with coupling agent, verifying the interface between cellulose fiber and polystyrene matrix.To obtain cellulosic fibers, the extraction was performed by the pulping process in strongly alkaline medium (NaOH). The composites were extruded in single-screw extruders, following by twin-screw and then submitted to injection molding. The materials were characterized by mechanical testing, thermal analysis (TGA, HDT, DSC and DMA), rheological analysis (rheometry parallel plate and melt flow index test), microscopy (SEM) and FTIR/ ATR . The results showed that the addition of cellulose fibers contributes to tensile, flexural strength and modules and hardness increasing. Regarding the thermal analyzes, these techniques permitted the evaluation of the temperature at which this material could be processed, and the influence of the matrix fiber content in heat deflection temperature. The TGA curve showed that the composite has a thermal stability intermediate between the cellulose fiber and polymer matrix. DSC showed similar thermal events in respect to recycled PS. HDT showed that when the fiber is added into the polymer matrix, the deflection temperature is also increased. The DMA curves showed an increase in the storage modulus and Tg (glass transition temperature) of the polymer and composites compared to literature. The microstructural analysis by SEM for PS and composites allows assessing the failure mechanisms of composites, showing a reasonable transfer of tension between fiber and matrix before the rupture of the material. However the FTIR did not confirm this observations regarding adhesion between fiber and matrix. The rheological tests confirmed the relationship between molar mass, viscosity and melt flow index. The composite with the lowest IF and the viscosity was increased with 20% cellulose fiber, so this has the highest viscosimetric molar mass. Thus, it was possible to define the best way of processing, mechanical performance, application and processing temperature limits, thermal stability, interface between fiber and matrix, viscosity, molecular weight and melt index for the PS composites reinforced with cellulose from sugarcane bagasse.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-02T00:16:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_5190_raiany gusso machado dissertacao.pdf: 1971017 bytes, checksum: 77bff620cef283991c606ae5a37b0990 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-17 / RESUMO Existem registros de elevada incidência de algas do gênero Cephaleuros (Trentepohliaceae) nas culturas de Psidium guajava (goiabeira) e Coffea canephora (café Conilon) no norte do estado do Espírito Santo, principal região produtora de café Conilon do Brasil. Essa pesquisa objetivou identificar os táxons de algas que colonizam folhas de Coffea canephora e Psidium guajava do norte do Espírito Santo e avaliar as respostas da fluorescência da clorofila a, anatomia e histoquímica das folhas colonizadas. O material vegetal foi coletado na Fazenda Experimental do Instituto Capixaba de Pesquisa, Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural (INCAPER), município de Sooretama, ES. Para anatomia, o material foi fixado, incluído, seccionado, corado e montado. A histoquímica foi realizada com cloreto férrico, floroglucinol acidificado e sudan IV. Material fresco foi seccionado para taxonomia. Bibliografias especializadas foram utilizadas na identificação dos táxons de algas. Para micromorfologia as amostras foram fixadas, desidratadas, submetidas ao ponto crítico de CO2, metalizadas e observadas em microscópio eletrônico de varredura. A fluorescência da clorofila a foi determinada por medidor portátil. As folhas de C. canephora e P. guajava apresentaram colonização na face adaxial. As análises anatômicas evidenciaram epiderme adaxial achatada, lignificada e com acúmulo de compostos fenólicos. O teste com sudan IV revelou a presença das algas no espaço subcuticular (Cephaleuros). C. canephora (com Cephaleuros sp.1) e P. guajava (com Cephaleuros sp.2) apresentaram colonização por algas de espécies diferentes. A fluorescência da clorofila a indicou estresse em folhas de café Conilon com maior densidade e diâmetro das lesões. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram que a presença de algas do gênero Cephaleuros causou alterações na fluorescência da clorofila a, anatomia e histoquímica foliar das plantas colonizadas.